Moto 360 and LG G watch: What we know about Android Wear, and what it all means for Google Glass

The core of the interface seems to be Google Now. Android has been made infinitely better with the existence of Now, which is now entering its second year of life and has moved from an opt-in tool that raised privacy concerns to occupying the leftmost screen on many Nexus and Google Play phones. A major facet of Android UI design over the last year has been a shift to cards, where chunks of data life in tiny but easy to consume in the blink of an eye packages. This interface is perfect for smartwatches, since you can swipe along from card to card and interact as necessary. More than just being Google Now, the watch demos seem to do a great job of floating the most relevant card to the top. This is currently something Google Now struggles with, so it will be interesting to see whether or not the company can deliver.

More than just Google Now, the Android Wear platform is supposedly capable of issuing commands through your phone. In one demo video, Google showed a young woman opening a garage door with a spoken command. In their introduction blog post, they describe using the watch to issue commands to a Chromecast and starting a music playlist that’s currently on your phone. Connectivity through your phone to other Google products is impressive, but the real power will come from the ability to open that up to other devices and APIs. The Philips Hue system is one of many that immediately come to mind.

As developers explore the Android Wear SDK, we’ll learn more about how Google plans to deal with this new sandbox. Like we’ve seen with Chromecast and Glass, Android Wear is an environment where a sloppy developer could completely ruin the user experience. It wouldn’t be surprising to see Google using a heavy hand to make sure developers understand the best practices and are able to launch a could of waves of quality apps before opening the floodgates to allow everyone in to do what they want.

What about Google Glass?

You might have heard about this other wearable computer that Google has been working on for a little while now as a part of their X lab. You might have also noticed that no one on the Android Wear team mentions it in any way, shape, or form. Google Glass has gained a lot of attention for being a Google Moonshot, but is it a part of Android Wear?

It’s not clear whether or not Android Wear and Glass will merge together at some point in the future, but for right now they appear to be separate. You’ll remember that the Glass team is currently in the process of updating that platform to Android 4.4, which will bring it in line with the rest of the Android platform. On top of this, much of the Google Now UI elements already exist within the Glass platform. Given time and cooperation, it’s not hard to imagine the Android Wear platform and Glass at the very least sharing some of the same tools.

This is something that will undoubtedly become more clear over the next few days, and will continue to take shape as we get closer to google’s annual developers conference. So far Android Wear and the watches that have been announced for it seem like incredible products, and if you’re anything like me you can’t wait to get your hands on them.